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Friday, June 22, 2007
Retail giant Wal-Mart held a national kickoff of its Money Center in Atlanta this week, and launched a Wal-Mart prepaid Visa card. It’s a move designed to offer financial services to Wal-Mart’s “un-banked” customers. Un-banked refers to millions of people across America who fall outside mainstream banking and who don’t have accounts with financial institutions.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Dilbert is an effective comic strip on many levels: the satire, the characterization, the commentary on corporate America, the way it captures the quirks of our engineering friends. But it’s easy to overlook that Scott Adams is a fabulous writer – and his recent blog post on effective writing reveals his approach.
The sheer size of outdoor advertising has tremendous potential to grab people’s attention. And these BBC billboards featured on the Pronet blog are great examples of a powerful concept made even more effective by their size, location (Times Square), and the fact that they have combined a traditional media component with an interactive element (the tally). I have seen these boards show up in different articles, blogs and other industry news stories over the last several months, and each time it is interesting to see how the vote has changed.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Almost two years ago, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought Myspace for $580 million. The rationale, according to analyst Alan Gould, was clear: “With a significant amount of advertising dollars moving from traditional outlets to online, News Corp, like most media companies, is looking to boost its internet assets.”
Back when that transaction went through, a lot of people were still talking about how rapidly rising Web company valuations were pointing to a second Internet “bubble.” However, there appears to be no bubble regarding the value of MySpace, and it now seems Murdoch has the Midas touch. TechCrunch is reporting today that Yahoo may be considering buying MySpace in a stock deal worth $12 billion. As the article points out, analysts have already pegged the value of MySpace in excess of $10 billion, so this isn’t at all out of the realm of possibility. That’s almost 2000% appreciation in less than two years!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Try to envision Times Square, Las Vegas or Tokyo without outdoor advertising. While some may consider outdoor promotion as visual pollution, it has become an iconic part of popular art culture in many cities. But what if we decided to outlaw outdoor advertising not only in New York and Vegas but other major American cities like Orlando, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and more. You can get a glimpse of what that scenario would be like in this story at Business Week about the Brazilian city that did just that: São Paulo.
